


“Reeft Tallik Yjana of Clan Heron-Catcher: Third and Eldest of the Fearsome Foursome, Though Youngest at Heart”

by Polgarawolf



Series: Star Wars: You Became to Me [42]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Civil War, Dysfunctional Jedi emotions/relationships, Expanded Universe Character Death(s), Expanded Universe Characters, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Grief/Mourning, Illnesses, Injury, Jedi (sacrificial ethics), Lies, Loss, M/M, Memory Loss, Nonhuman physiology, Obi-Wan Kenobi equals unrequited love (unless you're Anakin Skywalker), Original Character(s), POV Nonhuman, Politics, Protectiveness, Secrets, Sith machinations, Slavery, War, dark side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-15
Updated: 2008-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:45:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polgarawolf/pseuds/Polgarawolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is thirty random but chronological moments from the life of Reeft Tallik Yjana of Clan Heron-Catcher, one of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s three closest/oldest friends from the Jedi Temple crèche (hence, one of the “fearsome foursome” of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Garen Muln, Bant Eerin, and Reeft himself) and a Dressellian Jedi Master well known for his seemingly bottomless appetite, his proclivity for constantly telling stories and trying to make others laugh, and his endless optimism and good cheer, even in the face of seeming disaster. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Reeft Tallik Yjana of Clan Heron-Catcher: Third and Eldest of the Fearsome Foursome, Though Youngest at Heart”

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Reeft Tallik Yjana of Clan Heron-Catcher’s life, as he has been and is going to be written (or at least referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU , as she is going to be written (or at least referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU **Star Wars** series **_You Became to Me_**. If anything doesn’t make sense, please feel free to ask!
> 
>  **Author’s Notes: 1.)** Again, this is compatible with my SW AU series **_You Became to Me_** , including my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, if you squint at a couple of things sideways and view a few others solely through the lens of Reeft Tallik Yjana of Clan Heron-Catcher’s eyes. **2.)** Although this is technically modeled on a prompt set that I borrowed from somewhere on the LJ (I don’t recall from where anymore, though if someone would like to set the record straight, I’ll add the info for the community in question here in my notes), it’s not really meant to function as a response to the challenge associated with that set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Reeft. **3.)** Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters like Reeft or for original characters, for that matter, such as Dariel Babirye (Atsu’tam), should please consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ! For clarity's sake, though, please note that Johnny Lee Miller (one of the few people I didn't cast based on looks) is the person I imagine (in proper makeup/costume/prosthetics, of course!) as the Dressellian Jedi Reeft! Also, please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name (certain family members of original characters and relatively minor EU characters, for example) are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish! **4.)** I decided to make Dressellians a little more, well, alien in their physiology (seeing as how they’re not near-human and have teal-colored blood and all), which is why Reeft physically (and, to a lesser degree, mentally and emotionally) ages at a slower rate than most of his friends in the crèche. I’m going against the EU information regarding his birth date by doing this, but frankly it strikes me as improbable that all of the humanoid species would age exactly like humans and near-humans do, so . . . that’s why I thought this would work, especially since not a whole lot is heard about Reeft once his friends are Knighted (which makes more sense if one can posit that his time as a Padawan necessarily stretched quite a bit longer than, say, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s). **5.)** Reeft is one of Obi-Wan's oldest friends from the Jedi Temple crèche, he is a Jedi, and, even if he is a little iffy when it comes to the nature of human attachments, he is not an idiot (hence, most of the relationships listed on this story).
> 
>  **Story Notes:** **1.)** Since this is part of a larger on-going AU series that in some respects fairly closely mirrors or follows events of canon (up to a certain point, anyway), readers should please keep in mind that certain characters and events from the prequel movies/novelizations of the films and even events/places/people referenced in the EU or Expanded Universe may be mentioned or alluded to in this story. If anyone has any questions about whether someone or something is AU, canon, or EU canon, please feel free to ask! **2.)** Readers should probably be aware that I am roughly estimating (guestimating might be a better word) the original publication date for most of the character study pieces in the **_You Became to Me_** series (and indeed most of my stories, especially the ones written over a long period of time), based on when I roughed out notes for them in the story notebooks I carry everywhere with me and when I can recall having worked on certain groups of characters. The year is going to be accurate, but the month might be off and the day will almost certainly be randomly chosen, since the online account I had originally posted many of these stories to no longer exists. I tend to go back and edit things that are in series whenever I get the time or a new idea causes me to have to make room for something else plot-wise, and odds are good that a story could have been edited for typos as recently as the day of its posting here, but the original version will likely be much older and fairly close to the publication date that I attach to it, if anyone's curious!

**"Reeft Tallik Yjana of Clan Heron-Catcher: Third and Eldest of the Fearsome Foursome, Though Youngest at Heart"**

 

　

　

 **01.) Hot:** Dressellian biorhythms and metabolisms tend to run faster, hotter, and at a pace that, paradoxically, slows the rate of aging of their highly muscular, resilient, hairless humanoid bodies to a point below that of regular human norms, almost all near-humans, and many other sentient species with a similar aging cycle, meaning that, while Dressellians require far more food than baseline humans and near-humans, their lifespans naturally stretch anywhere from a fourth to half again that of regular humans and near-humans, which is generally the explanation given to explain why the naturally gregarious, friendly, and highly loyal species tends to stay close to home (though they’ve known of the Republic for quite some time and, as a whole, have cordial relations with the galactic power of which their world is a very small portion) and to avoid becoming entangled with or overly close to most humans and near-humans, though they will, occasionally, deliberately send one of their own out into the larger ’verse, if it is felt that the need is great or there is a call for that one to go, as happened with Reeft when he was sent to the Jedi Order as a youngling of a scant seven years of age.

 **02.) Friend:** Bant Eerin is one of the first friends Reeft makes, at the Temple – if they are very strong in the Force and they take care of themselves properly, there are some Mon Cal who can end up aging at nearly the same rate as Dressellians, and his endless rough good cheer and her measured calm and thoughtfulness seem to fit surprisingly well together, especially since his occasionally somewhat bloodthirsty nature often matches so closely to her infrequent flares of temper and high passion, their hearts seemingly beating in perfect synchronicity – and, though they don’t exactly purposefully keep themselves separate from most of the other initiates in the crèche (a majority of whom are either human or near-human or else in possession of a maturity cycle either close enough to a human’s or else so different from a Dressellian’s or Mon Cal’s to make forming close bonds at such an age too difficult and/or impractical to really be worth it), it isn’t until they’ve both been in the crèche for almost a decade and have finally left the extended infanthoods of their respective species behind for childhood and Reeft nearly accidentally ingests a strange little mechanical toy built by an extremely precocious young human initiate with bright blue eyes and red-gold baby-fine hair that either one of them make a human friend.

 **03.) Circle:** Garen is extremely bright, even for a Jedi initiate, and it’s surprisingly easy to forget that he’s only a few years old and hasn’t been in the Temple for much more than a year and so still isn’t really used to the way that the Temple and the Order operate, he fits in so well and seems so comfortable with the younglings’ routines (unlike many human and near-human initiates, who often don’t really adjust to the reality of being in the Temple until they’re around five years old or so), and Reeft enjoys his company so much (especially once he discovers what a prodigiously talented and funny mimic Garen is) that, when the crèche Master gently teases him about finally being ready to join the larger initiates’ community, he replies without even having to pause and think about it that he thinks he’s just going to stick with his own little circle of friends for now, thanks all the same!

 **04.) Notice:** Aside from a vague awareness of rumors that Knight Jinn and his former Master, Dooku of Serenno, had a fantastic row and falling out over Qui-Gon Jinn’s taking of Xanatos of Telos as his first apprentice, he’s never had cause to really notice Qui-Gon or Xanatos before . . . until Knight Jinn comes back to the Temple from a mission to the Outer Rim Territories with his blood up and an extremely ill little boy by the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi in tow, and suddenly _everything_ changes.

 **05.) Storm:** Many perceive the Force roughly in much the same way – intricate threads of light, swelling or calm currents of power, patterned streams of flowing color, living vines of growing (or dwindling) strength, rhythmic swells of achingly sweet notes that one is as likely to see or feel as one is to merely hear – but an individual’s perception of the Force is, in a way, also as individuated as the way a being will process scent or taste or texture; thus, when Reeft asks how Bant perceives Obi-Wan, he’s not surprised to hear her describe him in terms of a swirling vortex of powerful currents, any more than he’s surprised to hear Garen describe Obi-Wan in terms of an amalgamation of an ever shifting riot of brightly hued prismatic colors swirling like a living corona around a bright white core of almost tangibly solid light and pulsing warmth, even though, to him, the small near-human boy is such a blinding storm of light in the Force that Reeft often has serious trouble looking at him directly without feeling painfully blinded by the corona of the ultra-white light surrounding and permeating him.

 **06.) Spirit:** Blooded bonds are only rarely formed outside of immediate family and clanmates – they are too serious a thing, being an invocation of oneness believed to tie the body and soul of beings thus bonded together not only in life but beyond, for as long as the spirits thus tied feel the need to keep returning to the physical realm for further experience and knowledge, until ready for true eternal oneness with the cosmic spirit of light/life that is the Force – but he considers Bant and Garen and Obi-Wan to be his true family, his clan, so he does not hesitate to offer them the honor and he is beyond overjoyed when they accept, even though he’s not entirely sure he’s properly conveyed just how important such a tie actually is.

 **07.) Attack:** Despite the physical manifestation of an all too real light(ning) storm around Obi-Wan, when the five-year-old supposedly falls ill, Reeft knows what it is that he _saw_ , with his Force-enhanced vision, and it was _not_ an explosion of light, as though the small boy’s body were channeling too much of the Force and it had nowhere else to go, but rather an attack, something very like what he must imagine a black hole must resemble, a dark presence ( _Dark_ , even, so evil that he felt as if he might be ill, simply from seeing it as it attacked Obi-Wan) viciously latching on to Obi-Wan’s psyche, to the corona of light that goes with him everywhere, and seemingly sucking the energy, the very life, right out of him; thus, Reeft is convinced, now, that what happened was a deliberate attempt on someone’s part to destroy his blood-bonded brother, and not just some inexplicably strange sudden sickness, as the Healers are all claiming it must be.

 **08.) Question:** Siri Tachi and Darsha Assant – two human female initiates at the young end of the spectrum contained by their specific class, in the crèche, who have often watched but never really attempted to approach any of the members of his blooded clan before, so far as he knows – start to visit Obi-Wan in the Healers’ Ward and to hang about their suddenly reduced group, occasionally asking after the comatose boy’s health, and at first Reeft is suspicious that they may either know something about what happened to Obi-Wan or that they might have somehow been involved in the actual attack, themselves, but before he can do anything to act on his suspicions he happens to come across them by accident (unseen, hidden from their sight by a fountain in the gardens) when they’re sitting together after lunch, giggling instead of meditating, talking in low (but not nearly soft enough) tones about how awful what happened to Obi-Wan is (the brasher of the two, Siri Tachi, insisting that, if she finds out someone was responsible for his apparent sickness, she’ll kill the individual or individuals in question, so they’ll never be able to hurt anyone else ever again) and that they hope he’ll get better soon, because the Temple seems (as the quieter girl, Darsha Assant, puts it) deathly empty, without Obi-Wan and the constantly changing operatic symphony of power that follows him everywhere, after which he’s forced to reconsider, since the girls seem merely to have conceived what he believes are referred to as adolescent human crushes on his blood-bonded brother.

 **09.) Chant:** Quinlan Vos has _always_ watched Obi-Wan, for as long as he’s been at the Temple (which hasn’t been much more than a few scant years, for the both of them, granted, given that Quinlan was already five when Master Tholme brought him to the Temple and Obi-Wan was around three when Knight Jinn came back from that mission with him, a few months after Quinlan had been brought to the Temple; yet, his gaze has, nonetheless, been so constant, so steady, that even Obi-Wan noticed it, a couple of times, before the attack), but he’s never tried to approach Obi before, so far as Reeft knows (probably not so much because he’s too shy to do so as for the simple reason that he isn’t so much growing up in the crèche with the rest of the younglings as he’s simply sleeping in the dormers and being taught otherwise pretty much exclusively by Master Tholme, who’s continued teaching him since the death of his parents – having previously instructed Quinlan in the ways of the Force for a couple of years on his homeworld, Kiffu – and his journey to the Temple), so Reeft’s a little startled to walk in and find Obi-Wan not lying alone in his bed in the Healers’ Ward but with rather laying there with Quinlan Vos perched seemingly quite comfortably on the mattress next to him, slender long-fingered hands cradled tenderly around Obi’s limp right hand (his skin almost glowing, so pale is he in contrast to the Kiffar’s darkly tanned, slightly coppery-tinged skin), singing in a soft voice, in a language Reeft can only surmise is a native tongue, the low, rolling cadences sounding more like a religious chant than some kind of random tune to his (admittedly largely untrained) ears . . . and even more surprised to find himself automatically obeying the silent command in the Kiffar boy’s fierce dark eyes, when he steps forward with a protest ready on his lips, silently stepping right back out of the small private room to wait until the Kiffar is done, rather than pressing his own right to visit his ailing brother.

 **10.) Polite:** Darsha seems like a nice enough girl and Siri can be so audaciously forward and bluntly honest as to be positively hilarious, but he’s not about to let them muscle in on his brother just because Obi-Wan can’t seem to remember _anyone_ (including himself) when he finally regains consciousness: they can be friendly all they want to and Obi can choose to be polite and even friendly back at them, if he wishes, but Reeft and Bant and Garen are the ones who’re going to take care of Obi-Wan and bedamned if they’re going to open ranks for two foolish girls without enough courage to’ve pushed for any kind of relationship prior to the attack; he’ll let Quinlan (who at least has an excuse, for not trying to get closer earlier) lend a hand before he trusts either one of those silly girls for any real help.

 **11.) Secret:** The oddly mutable nature of human attachments baffle him, a little (the concept of keeping a strong affection or a hatred a secret is one that his species simply isn’t wired to truly understand, in all honesty), and so, when he asks Garen if he’s in love with Obi-Wan, Reeft is inquiring because he’s genuinely confused about Garen’s motives for his almost obsessively extreme closeness to Obi-Wan since he woke back up, not because he’s trying to cause trouble or shame Garen (who is, after all, also his blood-bonded brother and therefore someone he would gladly give up his own life in defense of, if it should ever prove necessary).

 **12.) Static:** He heartily approves of his own future Master, Binn Ibes, of course, or else he would not have accepted the offer to eventually become the man’s Padawan; similarly, he has nothing but respect for Master Clee Rhara, whom everyone knows intends to take Garen as her apprentice when he comes of age; and, while he has a few reservations about the uncomfortable amount of closeness between Knights Tahl and Jinn, he does not, precisely, _dislike_ the idea that Knight Tahl is going to be Bant’s Master: he cannot stand Qui-Gon Jinn, though, something about the man setting the Force to crackling about him in warning, biting at him like strong static electricity, and, no matter how much Obi-Wan seems inclined to set the damned man up on a pedestal for worship, he is certain, all the way down to the core of his bones, that nothing good can possibly come of Obi-Wan being made Qui-Gon Jinn’s Padawan.

 **13.) Grief:** He has a bad feeling about the whole Xanatos thing, so he’s unsurprised at how devastatingly hard Obi-Wan takes it, when the former Padawan chooses to suicide rather than allow himself to be captured, though he is more than a little discomforted at how violent Obi-Wan’s grief for the young man is, given that Obi can’t even remember Xanatos from when he was still Qui-Gon’s apprentice, when Xanatos was easily one of the single most important beings in Obi-Wan’s life.

 **14.) Understand:** After almost walking in on Garen and Quinlan physically using each other, apparently in some strange attempt to purge themselves of their mutual desire for Obi-Wan (rather than simply telling Obi and going from there, either towards a satisfactory solution to the dilemma or at least to a decision as to how to counter or banish the unwanted affection), Reeft is quite sure that, for as long as he lives, he’ll never completely understand how humans and near-humans deal with their stronger emotions, especially their more passionate feelings, and that he’ll just have to accept the fact that all humans and near-humans are all at least a little bit insane and so cannot be comprehended by others fully.

 **15.) Fit:** His people have been warriors and poets since as long as they have known themselves to be sentient, and they have been peacemakers and explorers only as recently as the discovery of the wider civilization of the Republic, so perhaps it is unsurprising that some portions of the Order and its rules should fit him so very well while others leave him torn between confusion and disgust, no matter how hard he tries to understand and to be a good and true Jedi.

 **16.) Fault:** For pity’s sake, it’s not as though he set out to deliberately slay the Xexto bounty hunter – he was sent to Brentaal IV to catch a thief, Rotar Lopani, not to try to start a conflict between the Order and the Bounty Hunters Guild – he just had the misfortune to walk in on Tosinqas mere moments after the Xexto had slain Rotar and reflexively drew his lightsaber, at which point the idiotic bounty hunter pretty much threw himself onto the blade and cut himself literally in two, so really, it’s not his fault that it happened, and it offends him, more than a little, when the High Council seems to be hinting that he should have done something to prevent the bounty hunter’s death from happening, as if there had actually been enough time that he could have done anything (short of allowing himself to be killed by a being he’d just seen murder his own quarry!) to stop the fellow!

 **17.) Story:** This whole thing with Naboo and a possible Sith involvement in a plot revolving around not just a blockade but apparently a planned invasion of that Mid Rim world just makes him nervous and angry as hell that the High Council won’t even wait a day or two to see if Darsha Assant will recover enough from her wounds to wake and either collaborate or repudiate Lorn Pavan’s story, and he’s far too honest to hide either feeling, even though Yoda himself may hem and haw and frown at him in disappointment.

 **18.) Idiot:** Qui-Gon Jinn was being an idiot and needed (and most definitely deserved) to be slapped hard up against he side of the head, but even so Reeft is surprised (and perhaps a little ashamed) to discover that his chief emotions, on hearing of Master Jinn’s death, is relief that the man won’t be able to do anything else to hurt Obi-Wan ever again . . . and pure anger at the man, for dying under such circumstances and placing such a burden not only on Obi but on the boy as well, who (if he has anything like a functioning conscience at all) will be forced to try to live up to Master Jinn’s beliefs and expectations now, whether they were ever true or reasonable or not.

 **19.) Shelter:** He’s always liked Bail Organa well enough (the man clearly should’ve been a Jedi: if being near to someone like Mace Windu is like standing where the rays of an unshielded hot summer noonday sun can reach, then being proximate to Bail Organa is like standing beneath that same sun, only on such an overcast day that the cloud cover obscures much of the dazzling brightness, if still permitting most of the warmth to filter through), but his estimation of the man’s character still goes up quite a bit after he learns that the Alderaanian Crown Prince has offered to shelter Obi-Wan and Anakin if the Coruscanti Temple doesn’t truly want them.

 **20.) Peculiar:** Anakin Skywalker is . . . a peculiar boy, and, if it weren’t for the fact that Obi-Wan so clearly loves him, Reeft suspects that he might do his level best to avoid the youngling altogether, as the former slave frankly strikes him as being fundamentally unstable (at least when separated from Obi-Wan, anyway. It’s more than just a little bit strange, to tell the truth. In Obi-Wan’s presence the two of them are like binary stars in perfectly balanced equipose orbit. Alone, Anakin is like one of those dangerously hot, massive, superluminal blue-white Wolf-Rayet stars, poisoning and destroying everything within reach of its swift-emitting hard radiation), prone to entirely too violently random swings back and forth from various overly strong emotions, and a frightening level of obsessiveness, even for a human, even if most of his obsessiveness seems to be directed towards being as useful to others as humanly possible, as pleasing to his new young Master as humanly possible, and just as close to Obi-Wan as he possibly can.

 **21.) Goodbye:** First Darsha Assant left the Order with Lorn Pavan (running off to Tatooine, of all places, to hopefully gain enough distance between themselves and the mysterious second Sith, who will most likely be carrying a grudge against them, even though the High Council didn’t take Lorn’s warnings about a Sith involvement in the Naboo debacle seriously) and now Siri Tachi has quarreled with her Master and left the Order, and he’s so shocked that he forgets, for a time, that he’s never really liked Siri or had all that much use for her (aside from finding her occasionally amusing) and so shouldn’t be too sorry to see the brazen little loud-mouthed idiot go, and accidentally makes Bant cry by irritably demanding to know why Siri thought she had to leave so badly that she couldn’t even be bothered to come and make any kind of proper goodbye to her friends, first, as Darsha at the very least had the decency to do.

 **22.) Beauty:** Though he understands notions of many different kinds of human and near-human aesthetics, individual physical beauty is a concept that largely eludes him, and so he fails to understand why, say, Padmé Amidala is referred to so often as an exquisite flower of a woman while a lady as loyal and generous and intelligent and kind and resourceful and funny as Sabé Kandala is passed over in favor of more gossip about that false-faced painted woman Sabé always refers to as Milady, as if that honorific were her only true title and proper name (as though it would somehow be an insult to refer to the Nabooian woman by her given name), whose greatest talent (so far as he can tell) involves successfully hiding behind others (like Sabé!) and (all too often) getting those others killed.

 **23.) Knowledge:** Jedi Knights are meant to take apprentices (if they survive the true time of trials that is the period of adjustment, when one must become used to the idea of not being an apprentice any longer and of being alone and having no one to rely on for rescue or for advice or orders, in a sticky situation), to pass along their knowledge and expertise and, in the explaining of such things, hopefully to truly come to fully comprehend and deeply know the mechanics of each item being taught (thus, earning the wisdom necessary to eventually become a true Jedi Master); so, even though he is rather young, yet, to be thinking about taking on an apprentice, Reeft is still disappointed when none of the younglings in and around Anakin’s age group call to him, as he would’ve very much liked to’ve had a Padawan of close enough age to justify being sent on a few joint missions with his brother and his oddly discomforting apprentice.

 **24.) Accident:** He and Garen are both late to find their matches, apprentice-wise, and he finds himself tickled quite literally pink to discover that they’ve not only chosen from the exact same class but that they have, wholly by accident, each chosen one of a pair of the exceedingly few sets of twins in the whole Temple (siblings – much less siblings from multiple births – only ever rarely being admitted unless separated in birth by a great deal of time, due to past troubles with violent sibling rivalry within the Order. These particular twins were taken in by the Order only because they were both equally strong in the Force and had no where else to go, being battle orphans from a senseless conflict on an Outer Rim planet so badly devastated by conflict that it is now essentially barren of life completely, and, having been reluctantly accepted, their names were altered slightly, to avoid problems of both sibling rivalry and the risk of too strong an attachment forming between the siblings, with the children only ever being told that they were blood kin who’d been rescued and brought to Temple – children of Coruscant, as it were – to stave off any . . . accidental inappropriate entanglements, as they grew older), with the boy (known as Dariel Babirye) coming to Reeft and the girl (Tabiah Caito) going to Garen.

 **25.) Wrong:** He gets the feeling, sometimes, that something somewhere has gone very wrong in the ’verse, both with the Order and the Republic, and that the Force itself will see to fixing it if they do not do it, themselves, and soon . . . and that the sentient beings of the galaxy may not be so pleased with the results, if the Force is made to act through unknowing or even unwilling tools, to address that imbalance, which is precisely why he tends to get very nervous when things like proposals for a standing military for the Republic and notions regarding the viability of allowing or not permitting certain member worlds and systems of the Republic to perhaps one day secede start flying about; thus, a part of him has been expecting something like Geonosis to happen for quite some time before it does, though that doesn’t mean it’s any less horrible or that the loss of life suffered by the Order and the Republic’s newly discovered clone army are any less devastating, especially considering that one who used to be of the Order is apparently a guiding force behind the organization responsible both for the battle and the war now raging.

 **26.) Serve:** Of course Reeft would do anything and everything in his power to serve the will of the Force and to protect the Republic, but only in that order, which explains why he ends up spending half of the war dragooned into a teacher’s role for the younglings rather than out on the battlefield, since he’s proven to be . . . occasionally contrary, when it comes to the receiving and obeying of orders.

 **27.) Safe:** After the ninth time Obi-Wan is temporarily captured or assumed lost/dead on the battlefield or nearly slain in battle, he makes a point of visiting Anakin Skywalker and asking him not if he needs help looking after his Master but rather if he thinks that Obi is reacting badly enough to the manner in which this awful war has broken out as to require more trustworthy individuals about him, to make sure that he doesn’t try to do every single thing rendered needful or useful by the war all by himself: it’s as much a test of Anakin’s character and his devotion to Obi-Wan as it is a genuine attempt on Reeft’s part to try to keep Obi safe, and he’s surprisingly reassured by Anakin’s dark scowl, his grousing about all the unnecessary risks his Master takes and how hard it is to make him understand that he’s just one man and physically cannot (and shouldn’t by any means be expected to) take care of the entire universe all by himself, and his fierce insistence that he can and will take care of his Master just fine by himself, thanks all the same, as Anakin’s unwavering determination assures him that the whole of the boy’s obsessive nature will be brought to bear against the problem of keeping Obi-Wan safe in the midst of a war that he (foolishly) seems to be blaming himself wholly for the outbreak and continuance of.

 **28.) Away:** The loss of his Padawan is so devastating (even though the boy technically is not dead and the Healers refuse to give up all hope that he may yet still wake from the coma) that Reeft simply cannot bear to be at the Temple, working in the crèche as an instructor, any longer, volunteering forcefully to be sent out to whichever one of the current many active fronts in the war happens to be the furthest away and the most likely to keep him occupied and away for Coruscant for the longest possible period of time.

 **29.) Insane:** Obi-Wan does not like the Supreme Chancellor and that would likely be more than enough to cement Reeft’s ill opinion of the Nabooian as well; the fact that the insane man seems determined to supposedly save the Republic by destroying everything that makes the Republic the _Republic_ (including the core tenets of the Galactic Constitution) pretty much seals the deal, though, and, in his opinion, if they truly wanted to end the war, the only thing the High Council would really need to do is to remove that man from office, so that they’d be free to find a more peaceful, diplomatic solution to the problem – one that wouldn’t involve destroying everything good in the Republic before the Separatists can manage to do it!

 **30.) Shock:** Somehow, it’s far less surprising to discover that the Chancellor is Sith Master Sidious, that it’s apparently possible to survive bodily death, via the Force, and that the whole of the Order has essentially been infected with the fear and insanity of the sickness known as the Dark Side of the Force than it is to find out that Obi-Wan and Anakin are now a genuine couple, though he supposes it’s probably his inability to really understand strong human emotions that’s causing this particular revelation to be so much more of a shock than anything else and that he’ll get used to it, after awhile . . . as long he just stops trying to puzzle out precisely what it is that’s apparently affected Obi-Wan so strongly as to make him reverse the changes done to his body, to permit him to keep his vow to remain chaste, in order to be with Anakin in the way that Anakin has (in retrospect) so manifestly been desiring for quite some time now.

　

　

**Author's Note:**

>  **Clarification Note:** One of the reasons why my AU **Star Wars** series _**You Became to Me**_ is so entirely not even nearly complete has to do with the fact that I really started writing at the wrong end of the prequel trilogy for an AU (in my defense, though, when I started what became my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio, which is over a million words long, I thought I was doing a sort of one-shot fix-it based on an idea I got for "fixing" RotS by changing something that happens very near the end of James Luceno's EU novel _Labyrinth of Evil_ , which is set immediately prior to RotS). One of these days, I fully intend to rectify that problem by going back and starting from the beginning, with an AU rewrite of TPM, which is why I took the time to do a character study sketch for a supporting character like Reeft. He'll be showing up again, probably in a more prominent role, whenever I get around to that AU rewrite of TPM, in addition to showing up in sequels planned for my _Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith_ trio. Folks might want to keep that in mind when reading this, since technically this is spoilerish for some AU novels that I haven't gotten around to writing yet!


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